Here's The Real Reason SendGrid Fired The Woman Who Complained About 'Dongle' Jokes

[The Straight Story]

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As a tech company, SendGrid has done its typical fair share for women, hiring women for key positions, and sponsoring things like the National Center for Women & Information Technology and LadyCoders Bootcamp.

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So I called Franklin and asked him to tell me what happened. He invited me to the SendGrid office on Friday and we had a candid conversation. While he never shared confidential information about Adria Richards, he did guide me to publicly available info that tells the real story, as he sees it.

Richards was fired because she couldn't do the job of Developer Evangelist. She "strongly divided the same community she was supposed to unite," the company flatly explained in a blog post.

But it wasn't the first time she was involved in controversy, SendGrid knew.

Richards is someone who is easily offended in order to turn those offenses into big public dramas, according to tech conference organizer Amanda Blum.

Blum told the story of how Richards grew upset that the word "porn" was used in a joking manner in a conference session write-up. Richards was a speaker at the same conference. Richards used the reference to the word porn to publicaly rail against the conference organizers on her podcast and during her speaking session, Blum says.

http://www.businessinsider.com/exclusive-why-sendgrid-got-a-bum-rap-for-firing-adria-richards-over-donglegate-2013-3

[Spider Jerusalem]

1. Adria Richards apparently has form for being...difficult

Here's what Amanda Blum says (not regarding the word "porn", the Business Insider piece is...wrong):

Why don’t I enjoy Adria? I met her in New York some years ago at a conference and invited her to speak at a conference I was organizing in Boston. She was a very good speaker and I wanted her to help our beginners. She’s not an easy person- she didn’t like the title of her talk, she didn’t like her time slot, etc. Two weeks before the conference, we got a few emails from attendees that she had just threatened on her podcast to boycott our conference because one of our speakers, Danielle Morrill was giving a lightning talk about how to use screencasting software called “Getting the Money Shot”.


She’d never told us she was offended, she’d never told Danielle- she told her podcasting audience and blog readers that we were promoting porn. In the end, after great drama, she attended and deep sixed her talk, instead lecturing the attendees about how porn wasn’t acceptable at conferences. The beginners in her class were less than amused and ultimately, deprived of the opportunity to learn from her.

At the time I was really angry and frustrated. We were unpaid volunteers organizing this event, and she never gave us the opportunity to try and solve the problem and was about to leave us in the lurch. By the time it blew up (an explosion created entirely by her) we felt cornered and blackmailed.

http://amandablumwords.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/3/